


means the world (to me)

by Solovei



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Based on "Jenny" by Studio Killers, Demisexual Kozume Kenma, Inspired by Music, Kenma is Bad at Feelings, M/M, Masturbation, Mild Smut, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-05-24 15:43:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6158548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solovei/pseuds/Solovei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe this is just what happens when you’ve been friends with a person for this long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	means the world (to me)

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to [Yrindor](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Yrindor/profile) for beta-reading.

Kenma knows it’s wrong, and yet it takes him a few silent moments to decide to do it anyway. 

Kuroo has turned away from his locker to yell at Lev and Yaku. 

_Now is your chance._

_Now, do it._

Slow advance, quick retreat; he is slightly amazed at how easy this feels. Fingers curl around something thin and round - a pencil ringed with bite marks, bearing letters faded beyond recognition. He throws a quick glance towards the door before placing this prize carefully into his own bag. 

That night, as he works his way through a sheet of algebra problems, Kenma pauses to consider that pencil. It beckons to him from the safety of its zipped-up prison. He gets up, takes it out, places it separately from his own. Just to have it close by; just to look at. 

He turns back to his homework, but the numbers don’t click anymore, he’s thrown off his momentum. His fingers tremble as he picks up Kuroo’s pencil, wonders what its owner is doing now (he looks like a slacker, but he’s in college prep classes, so… probably homework.) Kenma sighs, leans forward on his elbows, twirls it between his fingers. Those bite marks look fresh, he thinks. 

His heart is pounding in his chest. He presses his lips to the gnarled wood.

xxx

They’re on the train home after practice, and he is frowning at his DS.

“Hey Kenma, do you have my shirt? You know, the one with V Rider on it?” Kuroo asks him.

Forward or back, either way he will get ambushed. The party’s healer has barely any health left. “Why would I have it?” he replies calmly, clicking through a few menus.

“I think I left it at your house last time I was there.”

“... No, I don’t have it.” Kenma lies. 

xxx

He always expects more guilt at taking Kuroo’s things, at lying to his best friend, but his brain continues finding ways to justify it. He both loves and hates the fact that Kuroo is a trusting, if careless, person. He hates himself for betraying that trust, wishes that one day he’d just get caught. He almost craves it; he wants Kuroo’s anger, the yelling and the bloody noses and then speaking only when necessary during practices. Sometimes it’s easier just to burn everything down and move on. But he knows that will never happen, because that’s not the kind of guy he’s friends with. Even if Kuroo knows, he would never say anything to Kenma. And even if he knows about the stuff, he definitely - definitely __, Kenma thinks, underlining it in his mind - does not know _the reason_. 

_The reason_ is a strange thing that Kenma only become aware of several months ago. It started off small and dense; over the course of its growth, spaces formed that allowed other things to pass through, coil around it until it became overgrown and ingrained. He refuses to give it a name. Isn’t it enough that he has partially acknowledged its existence? It’s not an animal that follows you home, it’s something darker and more painful. Kenma tries not to think about _the reason_ as much as he can, praying that if he ignores it, eventually it might leave him be. 

xxx

They are at his house, and Kuroo is using his laptop. He said it was for homework, but they both know he’s on 2chan. Kenma has hidden his keepsakes carefully; the V Rider shirt, along with the pencil and a couple of bracelets, is in a box at the back of his dresser. 

“Oi, Kenma, what do you think of her?” Kuroo calls him over, pointing to a picture on the screen. 

Kenma blinks, frowning slightly. “Who is that?”

“Some girl who goes to school in Saitama.”

“... So?”

“ _So_ , do you think she’s hot?” 

“I don’t know, Kuroo.” Kenma sighs and wanders back to his history textbook. “She might have a terrible personality.”

“Well yeah, but that’s not what ---”

“And anyway, what kind of person would put their pictures up in a place like that?” He can feel something spilling over in his voice, even as it drops to barely a whisper. “You don’t want… someone like that.” 

Kuroo turns around again. “Eh? Did you say something?”

“Nothing.”

He makes sure to delete his browser history after Kuroo goes home. 

xxx

Maybe he’s just getting confused. He hopes that’s the case, sometimes. Kenma has never been very good at relationships, after all. Maybe this is just what happens when you’ve been friends with a person for this long, you start thinking about them all the time in ways you’re not sure are always good. He considers asking someone, but - he laughs because the irony is not lost even on him - Kuroo is the only person he would approach about something like this. 

xxx

When he can’t sleep, he opens his box of treasures and takes out the V Rider shirt. It’s old, from when they were in middle school. For a moment, he feels a twinge of guilt. But, Kenma says to himself, Kuroo has a million shirts. He doesn’t understand why he needs so many when he spends 90% of his time wearing either the school uniform or the volleyball one. Surely one less shirt will not make much of a difference.

The fabric is soft in his fingers. Blanketed by darkness, he lets himself raise it up and inhale. It still smells like Kuroo, and Kenma doesn’t understand why he likes that. It’s not like he doesn’t see him nearly every day already. But something about this feels different… private. Like when you press your hand against a fogged-up mirror and it leaves a trace. 

He moves to one side of the bed, up against the wall. Under his covers it’s warm and quiet, and if he tries he can pretend that the sound of his breathing is someone else’s. Kenma lays a hand on his stomach idly, feeling it expand as he takes a breath in, and out, and in… He has the V Rider shirt clutched in his other hand, fingers opening and closing, opening and closing. He realizes that if he turns his head just so, he can summon up Kuroo’s form in the empty space beside him.

This is not a good realization. He does his best to think about something else, about volleyball, or how annoying Lev is, or Hinata’s last text, _anything_ but the reality of the situation he’s found himself in. He tenses his muscles for a few moments, lets go, tries to take deep breaths. 

None of it works.

Kenma feels his hand snake down towards the edge of his shorts. _Slow advance…_ The Kuroo he imagines is not wearing a shirt at all, only that stupid grin and his signature bedhead outlined orange in the dull light from the streetlamp. He imagines running his fingers through that unruly black hair, across his shoulders, and… 

If he tries, he can pretend his hand is someone else’s too. He can pretend Kuroo’s weight is beside him, on top of him, substantial but not too much. And Kuroo’s hands are big, bigger than his own, big enough to envelop him whole, covering him in heat and friction and desire. A stray gasp escapes his lips, and he bites down on the collar of his shirt so he doesn't make too much noise. The hand that isn't his hand gets bolder, faster, and Kenma shuts his eyes tightly. He feels as though he's running on autopilot, that the motions are not his own, and only with the final release does he fall hurtling back into his own self. 

xxx

Kenma feels like he crossed some kind of forbidden line, stepped past the point of no return. He is messed up, his world doesn't make sense anymore. It’s as if the very fact that his best friend exists makes him anxious. He makes every excuse he can to avoid Kuroo during volleyball practice and buries himself in his games at all other times. 

The worst part is that if he pauses to think about it, _really_ think about it, he doesn't really mind it that much. When it's a lazy Sunday in Kuroo’s room, and he’s listening to him mess around on his guitar, Kenma feels like everything is right with the world. Like he doesn't have to be a anything for anyone, he can just … be. But that only lasts for a moment before he starts imagining what everyone else will say, what they would think of him for taking a friendship and turning it into something rotten. 

xxx

He is on one of his usual gaming forums when he sees the post. He isn’t sure why he clicked on it, really. It seems the opposite of the sort of thing he'd usually read. 

“help! I've been friends with this person for a long time and I think I'm starting to fall in love! But, what do I do? I don't want to ruin our friendship”

Kenma stares at that last sentence for longer than he would later admit. Maybe that was what he needed to do, it dawns on him slowly. Ruin his friendship with Kuroo, and replace it with… what? He hadn't thought that far. Kenma isn’t sure he could even picture the thing that would come logically after that. 

xxx

Kenma can't sleep again because he suddenly remembers everything Kuroo has ever said to him in this room, every lame joke and overexcited description of some volleyball move he saw on TV. The walls are saturated with his voice, air thick and heavy like syrup. He kicks off the blankets - their comforting warmth has turned heavy and suffocating. Everything in this room and at school and everywhere else reminds him of Kuroo and he wants with every fibre of his being to escape.

He decides to go to the one place he can think of.

xxx

He isn’t a very spontaneous person. He likes his routine, he likes how volleyball and video games are governed by rules that he can understand. So Kenma feels very much unlike himself, sneaking downstairs and unlocking his bike chain with shaking hands in the dead of night. He feels like someone else, a person he doesn’t know. He isn’t sure if he likes this new person yet.

It’s only a few blocks, but tears sting at his cheeks as he rides. He knows what he has to do, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

xxx

In movies people usually throw little rocks at windows, but he doesn’t see any lying around. He sends a text instead, because he knows Kuroo never figured out how to silence his phone. 

“come outside. please” he writes.

xxx

When he sees Kuroo’s face emerge from the shadows, it takes every muscle in his body to not turn around right now and go home. But he has to do this. There is no other way. 

“Yo~” Kuroo offers in greeting, hopping up beside him on the railing. His hair looks even messier than usual. 

“I have to tell you something.” Kenma says, staring fixedly at the nearest manhole cover, because he knows that if he looks at his friend he will lose his resolve, lose himself in this, and he can’t, he can’t, he can’t; his heart beats to the rhythm of this mantra. 

“Okay.” 

He hopes that Kuroo will not see the wetness of his eyes in the dark. “I can’t… be your friend anymore.” 

There is a sigh, and he is even more scared to look now. “Okay, I'll bite. What did I do now?” He has that maddening little laugh in his voice, the one that seems to say he knows exactly how things will turn out; Kenma wants to slap him.

“Nothing. I just can't do this, and I thought I'd be nice and tell you in person.”

“Okay listen,” Nekoma’s captain starts, standing up and smirking up at the night sky. “we've known each other for how long?” 

“Since middle school, but that doesn't --”

“Right, that's a long time. And in all that time I have never seen you get out of the house this late and come over just to tell me something.” He is leaning down, trying to peer into the shadows cast by Kenma’s drawn up hood. 

The setter turns away again, almost falling off the metal bar he’s sitting on.“Don’t, Kuro…” 

“Come on, what's wrong? Your eyes look red.” He stands very close, and Kenma is torn between falling into his arms and punching his stupid face. 

“I can't be your friend anymore because...” He hears himself say. It feels like someone else. For the first time, the person he isn't feels sort of okay, maybe. Maybe this is fine. Kuroo looks at him, concern and confusion coloring his face in the dark. “I… I have your V Rider shirt.” He can't seem to stop now. “I lied when you asked me if I had it because I wanted… I wanted to keep something of yours. Also I took a pencil from your bag last week, and some bracelets before that. So that's… that's why I can't do this, I've been lying to you for so long, and I've been a horrible friend. You're better off without me, Kuroo.”

He doesn't know if Kuroo’s silence is a good or bad sign. Regardless, it’s done now. The truth is out there, and he has to live with the consequences. He came here to ruin their friendship and that was what he did. Everything according to plan. So why does he feel like he wants to lock himself in a room and never come out?

“Well. Maybe we can be something else instead?” he hears. 

xxx

He feels like there is a charge between their bodies, a sort of static hum. The cool dark of the evening hides him, cocoons him in body heat, and Kuroo’s hands cupping his face are softer than he imagined, but he doesn't mind. Their foreheads touch, and Kenma licks his lips slightly before tilting his head forward, uncertain and testing. 

So this is kissing. It doesn’t feel like he expected.

It feels better.

xxx

When they break apart, his cheeks are hot again, but for a different reason now. He stands very still, not wanting to lose this feeling for any reason. “I should… probably go,” he whispers. 

“It’s the middle of the night, Kenma.”

“Well, I rode my bike here, so…”

“No way, come on. You’re staying with me tonight.”


End file.
